But what is 'precision medicine' and why does it matter? Dr Janet Allen, Director of Strategic Innovation, digs deeper.

On 20 January 2015, President Obama made this announcement
in his State of the Union address to the US nation:

“Tonight,
I’m launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing
diseases like cancer and diabetes – and to give all of us access to the
personalised information we need to keep ourselves and our families healthier.”

This was an exciting, bold statement that frames the future
of treatments where individuals are treated as individuals. Recently Francis
Collins, Director of the USA National Institute of Health, gave his vision of
how this will be delivered, at the Faster Cures conference at the Milken
Institute (pictured). He described the programme as “big, hairy and audacious – and so it
should be.”

Dr Collins argued that the time is right to do this mainly
as a result of technologies coming together that will be able to inform
treatments; for example genomics, environmental effects, personal wearable
sensor technology. In the past, new treatments were approved based on the law
of averages. For instance, how does this treatment lower the average person’s
cholesterol compared to no treatment?

We
need to move away from this to a state where the right drug is given to the
right patient at the right time to achieve the right effect.

This is the aim of precision medicine; we need to convert
our thinking on how to keep people healthy and not see healthcare as only
having a role in treating ill-health. A key component in the development of
precision medicine is to engage with people as equal partners and not as
subjects for study. This thinking will transform the way we do scientific
research and is already creating the concept of ‘citizen scientists’. All of
this will not happen overnight but the very mention of precision medicine in
the State of the Union address creates momentum and it is clear that the
National Institutes of Health are up for the challenge and ready.

If you think that precision medicine is only for the ‘big’
conditions such as heart disease and cancer, see the extended quote from the
State of the Union address: “21st century businesses will rely on
American science, technology, research and development. I want the country that
eliminated polio and mapped the human genome to lead a new era of medicine –
one that delivers the right treatment at the right time. In some patients with
cystic fibrosis, this approach has reversed a disease once thought
unstoppable.”

These are truly interesting and exciting times and we need
to ensure that cystic fibrosis remains in the vanguard of developing precision
medicine to benefit each and every individual with the condition. This is
audacious but that shouldn’t stop us. As another speaker said:

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